L’Arpeggiata: Music For A While

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Two-thirds of this selection is refreshing and delightful: laid-back jazz
treatments of Purcell’s dances and airs, including Dido’s Lament,
Music for a While and Evening Hymn. The imaginatively
improvising instrumentalists include virtuosi jazz clarinettist Gianluigi
Trovesi, and the singers (led by star countertenors Philippe Jaroussky and
Dominique Visse) produce plangent, pop-inflected lines. However, their
attempts at the humorous songs are embarrassing and unintelligible. Pity. (Erato,
out